Before You Go to Sleep
by mescribble
Summary: S4. The Final Problem. That rushed ending montage - not so rushed. Be warned: there's Johnlockage. Oh, yes, there's all the Johnlockage to be had here. Come at once if convenient. If inconvenient, come all the same. (Could be dangerous.)
1. Before You Go to Sleep

Hello Reader (been a while, hope all is well with you) -

I cross my fingers now that this story will be to your liking. If it is, please, do leave a comment. If it isn't... well, that'll suck. But yes, do let me know either way.

I understand many of you are in pain and are still reeling after TFP, but - and don't turn away now - I have to admit that I felt elated, and equally delightedly floored, by how they chose to end it all.

I will ship Sherlock Holmes and his clean-shaven doctor until I'm very grey and very brittle indeed, and the thought of those two forever in their scruffy flat, rather than separated by a second marriage and some strange hankering for the Sussex Downs, will make me smile as much in fifty years as it does now. So my hope, my tiny little hope, is that this story of their ending (...beginning...?) - if anything - makes you smile with me.

Much love,

Annie

 **Before You Go to Sleep**

I've always been good with narrative. As a result, I can piece together the narrative of a crime scene, of a person, of a thing, usually within seconds of coming into contact with it. Mycroft blames my overactive imagination, but that's simply because he doesn't really have one. I played at pretending to be pirates on the beach while he meticulously set up his tin soldiers among the stones, following whatever battle plan of whatever great war that last caught his hunger for strategic thinking. I always longed for the game, rather than the planning of it. Narrative, then, became a mixture of both and was the first game my brother and I ever managed to play at together, all be it we competed from the first. One of us would choose, at random, an object, and creating a story around it grew into creating a truth for it grew into seeing the truth of it. And then of people. Which is how I knew, the moment you walked into the lab at Bart's, propped on that cane, that you were a beginning.

Here came a soldier, crippled by his own mind, into the company of a man whose mind would become his crutch, and, yes, perhaps that's unfair of me, but only if I don't admit how your steady hand has steadied mine on more than one occasion.

I had no one before you, and so, standing in that dusty hallway of my burned out ancestral home, I knew how she felt. I understood her, understood the maddening boredom of solitude, and I could see what had driven her this far, even before your dire situation was revealed to me, revealed through water pouring in to drown you, water pouring because of my sister. My sister put you down a well in order for me to solve her final problem and she nearly killed you. Until she helped me save you. It made it easy to forgive her, because her mind was crippled and her hands were shaking and she had no one.

There's regret that I wasn't strong enough to keep her brilliant mind from driving itself passed the point of moral sanity. Her actions were born out of her loneliness and despair, these defining emotions afforded her by her decided outsiderness, stamped on her even before she was old enough to fully comprehend what it meant. She had no one to play with, no one to listen to her, to even attempt to understand her. The way you've attempted and succeeded in understanding me. And so I'll take her for who she is, try to make amends and, hopefully, possibly, mend her in the process.

If I can only reach her.

"Sherlock?" your voice takes me out of my reverie, and my eyes meet yours across the table. "You haven't heard a word I've said."

"Sorry," I apologise, earnestly.

You observe me for another few moments, chewing your steak, before you put your fork down on your plate - a soft scraping of metal on porcelain - and lean back on your chair. Your eyes never leave my face. Your expression is one of soft concern. I know it well. I've seen it many times on you before. I'm not worried by it now, not annoyed at its intimacy, but rather I welcome it. A little under two very short months ago I hardly dared expect I'd ever see you wearing it for me again, but your forgiveness has always been absolute. Once given it's permanently fixed and nothing will sway it - not even nearly drowning - and I do wonder what I did, in this life, to ever deserve you.

"You're thinking of _her_ ," you remark.

The distant echoing memory of my bow, stroking life into the Stradivarius in my sister's Sherrinford cell, fills my head with a melody I composed while deep in grief and reeling from failure, the notes intermingling with ones signalling an inclination that I've never classified as desire, but rather a meeting of minds. I didn't know then the untruth I was restating to myself, even while composing. My sister saw it immediately and would have none of it. I wasn't showing her my true self and I wasn't impressing her by so willingly laying bare this glaring flaw to my character, this best hidden secret, this lie that I had come to stake all my trust in: that emotion dulls the intellect into submissiveness and that I could not abide it. She tested the lie and saw the truth in something as simple as a tremor in my hand.

 _Emotional context. It destroys you every time._

I pick up my cutlery and cut into the meat on my plate, scooping up some mash, gathering myself into something else than what she's left me with. But you're still waiting, still watching, and, of course, I can't just ignore you.

"This is good," I offer, once I've swallowed the bite down with some wine.

"She's okay. She's safe," you say, kindly trying to convince me, as you have on numerous occasions since we watched her get loaded into the back of a highly secured police transport, that I mustn't feel as responsible as I do. "You've been distracted for weeks," you add, the concern back. "Sherlock."

You get my eyes in yours by using my name in that well-worn tone. From the first, that tone has born your impatient encouragement - for me to be honest, to be inclusive, to focus, to move or to stay put, to not be such an arrogant asshole and to admit when I'm wrong, or lost, or just guessing my way to the solution of a problem. Any occasion can call for that tone and you've used it more times than even I can remember, but it always serves it's purpose. It always keeps me right.

"I'm fine," I reassure you and you frown a little at me, as though I just tried to be amusing and failed spectacularly, before you focus back on your food.

We're in one of those restaurants that have been consciously tucked away from the major tourist treks, on a backstreet in Soho, and the clientele tonight, as ever, is made up of professionals and pristine locals who enjoy the ability to barely even glance at the price list and always order whatever the waiter recommends them. They're relaxed, on home turf, and I feel myself relaxing with them, and as I watch you enjoy the meal I'm thinking…

Don't think.

"It's been a while," I say. "Since we had dinner," I finish, your eyes back in mine and you smile your agreement.

"It's nice," you nod, looking around. "We haven't been here before?"

I shake my head.

And it's been more than a while. It's been since before your wedding.

This used to be my favourite thing to do, sitting opposite you at a table, no matter really where the table was or what hour of the day, or night. I have always had trouble trusting strangers, they misconstrue with such ease and find fault where none is truly to be found, but you never really felt like a stranger, and from that first time at Angelo's, where an unnecessary candle burned between us and you gave me your assurances that you'd accept me as I was, however I was - something you'd already demonstrated more than once in the short time I'd known you - I've enjoyed the thought of us doing this, sharing an allocated space, candle or no candle. Perhaps that's why the enjoyment has lingered, because of how it's been restated at every new table, that inexplicable and sudden hope to be seen, to be allowed to be myself, without fear of judgment or ridicule, without name-calling or sneers.

"Did they deliver the fridge?" you ask.

"No," I murmur distractedly, quickly correcting myself with: "Or, yes, they did. Three hours late."

"Mh. But it's coming together nicely," you nod in reference to our formally shared abode, scraping the last of the mash off your plate. "Be great not having to take meetings with new clients ankles deep in rubble."

"They don't mind," I mutter, bringing the wine glass to my lips for a deep mouthful.

You're smiling again.

"The sitting room is being painted, isn't it?" you ask. "Be another few weeks before it's all back to normal. Why don't you just come and stay in my guest room? Bound to be an improvement - it actually has a bed."

"I can't be expected to conduct my work from _Highgate_ ," I sneer, not quite intending for it to come through so harshly. "It's too far away," I add, still a little annoyed at how you simply won't see reason.

"It's really not," you insist on standing your ground and I widen my eyes, refusing to get back into this argument with you.

"Barely any homeless people," I grumble, digging around for my mobile, just to have something to occupy my idle fingers with when twirling my wine glass on its foot doesn't quite cut it anymore. "Moving me there is like digging a pond in the middle of a desert and then sitting down to wait for it to fill with water. I can't work without a constant flow of useful information. You know that."

You're silent for a breath and a half, my fingers quickly tapping away a search, and I'm achingly aware of your eyes on me before you inquire:

"Finding anything useful?"

It makes me hit the home button, my eyes meeting yours as I try to ignore the teetering on overpowering need to tell you exactly why I wouldn't, and still won't, come and stay with you in your new home. I suppress the urge with swift and precise understanding that nothing good would come of it.

I already know the end of the conversation because it's perfectly obvious you're staying put. You've made absolutely no overtures of even thinking of leaving, even as the flat, everyday, is beginning to resemble its original state.

Why would you think about it? Why should my need of you influence your decision of where to live? Why should my opinion be allowed to sway you? Your monetary cut from our combined efforts can keep you and Rosie living comfortably where you and Mary decided to raise her. So why should you even contemplate leaving?

Not that I've actually told you Baker Street won't ever be what it was because you're not in it, nor have I confessed to how it's been something else ever since you left it. Because I'm certain you can't see why it would be. You told me, while we were sitting on a bench once, that your marriage wouldn't alter anything. You were being perfectly honest, and perfectly ignorant of how it fundamentally altered everything.

"Fine, alright, it's okay," you then say, and at my quizzical expression you clarify: "You can't work in Highgate. But you barely even visit. Now, _that_ I do take issue with."

You're completely misreading the root of my aggravation, but you're also telling me I've not been a good friend to you over the past few weeks and I wish you could understand why. I grow hesitant, the need to correct you building into a current of impulse that I control by saying anything, rather than the something on the tip of my tongue.

"Will you come by? Once I'm settled?" I ask, not wanting to sound so hopeful, unable not to.

You look a little questioning of my even feeling the need to ask, but this isn't for a case, it isn't an impromptu visit, but a tangible invitation, a plan for you to claim the space of your chair for longer than half an hour.

I've come to the conclusion that companionship is a drug, one that is almost impossible to get out of your system once you've become a regular user, and your proximity, even after all this time spent apart, is the only thing that properly centres me, the only thing that enables me to lean my head back and close my eyes and sink into the quiet, into the warming heat from a lit fire in the fireplace and the muffled sound of Mrs Hudson's radio from downstairs.

I thought I'd stop missing you. I know now that I never will.

x

The DVD has two simple words written on its white surface and it's enough to make my palms sweaty with misgivings. I wish she hadn't. That's what I think as I dial Sherlock. I wish she didn't do this to me. She keeps hitting the refresh button on the turmoil I've been in ever since she stepped in front of that bullet, and it doesn't really take much to refresh it as is. What does she have to say to me? It doesn't matter what it is, I need him here. I need him to listen with me. I don't know why I need it, only that I do, without even a moment's hesitation. Two months ago I never wanted to see him again and now I'm pacing my living room, wondering what the hell is taking him. Highgate _isn't_ _that bloody far_.

Five more minutes and he arrives, composed and watchful. His eyes scour my face in search of my mood, but all I can really show him is straight-backed stoicism, now that he's here.

This is why he's here.

I put the DVD in, grab the remote and go sit on the sofa. He looks at me then, and I register the regret there, a quiet apology for the circumstances being what they are, for the bullet that killed my wife having been meant for him. He must know that his recognition of it was all I needed from him. His show of respect for Mary has never wavered and that's why it wasn't difficult to stop directing all my guilt at him, all my blame and self-loathing. Now he's here, I feel ready to get on with it.

I press play.

My wife speaks to me, to us both, and I know it's for the last time. I think of the life I had with her and the joy that was there, in the life we made for ourselves, together, and yet… I feel the bitterness of my betrayal of her, as well as the disturbance of how the life we made wasn't enough for me. How could it not be enough? And as I have on many occasions, I now wonder if she knew. She knew everything about everything, why wouldn't she have figured out what I was doing behind her back? It makes her words weigh even more heavily because never, not once, did she show any inclination towards questioning the necessity of Sherlock's presence and his continuing to be a focal point, with me going off on cases, feeding my addiction, and here she is again, encouraging us to continue our partnership.

However stricken I am by her face on the screen, her smile, her encouragement, I feel oddly calm about it. She was never not this. She was never not supportive of my continuing the work with Sherlock. Her words serve to underline what I already know, but it doesn't make them any less valuable. Sherlock looks over at me, and I'm sure he's trying to suss out my reaction, but there's not really any reaction to suss out. I feel, at last, a sense of peace. She came into my life when I was broken and meeting her really was the best thing that could ever have happened. She was the best thing. My Mary Watson.

Then she's gone. The screen goes a deep blue. The DVD spins to a stop and all is quiet.

"Her 'Baker Street boys'?" I finally can't resist commenting.

I look over at him and see he's smiling as well. He shares in my chuckle, before shaking his head, eyes once more on the empty TV screen. He looks contemplative, the smile fading as he begins to get lost in thought. I've seen that happen so often that it doesn't faze me, only this time I'd rather he didn't wander through that palace in his head, but chose to remain here, with me. For a cuppa.

"Can you stay awhile?" I ask, not waiting for a reply as I head into the kitchen to put the kettle on.

He follows, staying silent, something still on his mind. When I glance over at him I notice he's watching me with an odd look. Like I'm a stranger, almost. It makes me feel a sudden burst of unease. Did he make something else of the message? Was there something more to get out of it? Why is he looking so distant?

"Sherlock?" I say, dragging him off whatever trail his thoughts are on, his eyes focusing on me properly. "Something wrong?"

He stares at me for another moment before he blinks and shakes his head in an expressive way of clearing his mind, offering me a noncommittal wave of one hand as some sort of reassurance before taking one of the chairs at the kitchen table. I'm not entirely convinced by his suddenly cavalier attitude, however, and lose my patience quickly.

"What did you make of it then?" I therefore ask.

"I don't know," he replies slowly, and I'm overcome by the realisation that he's telling the truth. "Well, apart from the fact that your wife clearly wants you back in Baker Street," he adds with a cheeky breeziness that makes me shake my head at him, unable to keep a smile off.

"That's not what she said," I disagree.

"Wasn't it?" he provokes and I give him a look to give it up, because of course it wasn't what she said.

She was talking about our taking cases and meeting clients at the flat, like we have for the past few years, like we'll continue to do. Not for a moment did I think she even hinted at my returning there permanently.

"How would that work?" I can't resist prodding, wary of why he'd even bring it up.

"There's room," he shrugs, accepting his cup with outstretched hands, wrapping his fingers tightly around it.

"There's _a_ room," I disagree, wondering if he's cold, needing to warm his hands like that, but he's still wearing his coat, and I'm getting distracted by mannerisms now, which is most probably his intention anyway, so I disregard his possible chill and add: "With barely enough space for me. I couldn't bring Rosie into that."

"There's always 221C," he offers, casually slurping his tea as if this didn't just turn into a serious discussion.

"It has damp," I give as my very real protest to even thinking about it.

He raises his eyebrows high and his pale blue eyes grow large, which always makes him look startlingly younger than his nearly forty years and brings me back to our early days, him leaned over something burning or melting or generally misbehaving among his chemistry set in the kitchen, his entire being focused in ways I couldn't understand back then, and barely can now either, and he says, his tone indicating I've just slighted him personally and not just the musty, dark basement flat:

"Not anymore."

"What do you mean not anymore?" I inquire.

"What do you mean what do I mean? It doesn't have damp anymore," he replies.

"What?" I demand.

"It's been renovated," he informs, as though he thought I knew, when he knows perfectly well I had absolutely no idea.

"When?"

"Just now. With the rest of the house."

He says this as though it should be the most obvious thing in the world, as though I should have assumed this was what he would choose to do when he's never given it any thought before, or mentioned it during the weeks I've spent helping him getting everything back to his exacting standards, all of it more or less returned to the very same state it was in before that bomb went off, scuff marks and all.

"I did threaten Mrs Hudson I'd turn the room into a mortuary if she doesn't agree to open the front door for new clients," he adds with deep satisfaction and I stare at him. "Of course, a nursery works just as well," he finishes magnanimously.

"You're serious?" I ask.

"Like a heart attack," he replies, a small smile reaching his eyes, but there's also a sudden vulnerability asking why I'm in such disbelief.

"There's an actual baby," I state.

"I know there's a baby," he replies, tension in his voice as he's growing defensive.

"Right, but you don't know anything about what it means to have one," I say.

"I'll learn," he deflects with another raise of his shoulders.

"No, Sherlock," I disagree.

"I love Rosie," he protests, frown on now, and my eyes meet his.

All I can see on his face is how truthfully he just declared his love of my daughter and my expression softens, in spite of my having absolutely no intention of listening to him any further.

"I'll learn," he repeats.

For a moment we eye each other and the enormity of the proposition takes a gentle hold. We'd be in Baker Street again, a set of stairs and a knock away from one another. Or, on his part, loud shouting and pounding the wall. That sobers me up. He may be different to that man, but at his core he's still the roommate who'd wake me up at three-thirty, scurrying around my room, tossing clothes my way, demanding I hurry, hurry, only to discover an hour later that what we were hurrying to do was, in fact, place me outside a flat for the next five hours to look at the door, that door, only that door, while he went on to the Yard to continue his inquiries there. Do I really believe anything would be different? No, I'm a father now. I have my child to consider. I'm not bringing her into the very heart of all this madness.

"We're not talking about this anymore," I put a hand up as warning that I mean it. "I'm not moving anywhere. So that's the end of it."

I try to ignore the unbidden, but free-flowing, homesickness that moves through me at the thought of my old room, of having breakfast opposite him, of evenings spent reading in my armchair and nights when his playing the violin will ease me out of sleep and then lull me back into it again. Memories of days that were some of the happiest of my life, that's true, but only memories and I have to be pragmatic about the nostalgia. For Rosie's sake.

x

For the past two days, Mary's message has been preoccupying my mind to such a degree that I've given up on casework all together. There's nothing much in the inbox at the moment, anyway. We'll pick up the slack once I'm fully moved back in, which is as soon as the electrician has finished with the sockets in the sitting room.

I'm seated in my adequately restored bedroom, on my bed, back against the headboard, staring, unseeing, as I ponder the final words of your wife.

She was an exceedingly clever woman and she knew us both, possibly better than we could ever properly understand. We will neither of us have the advantage she had as she stood outside our friendship, however much a part of our relationship that she became, and therefore gained the perspective afforded the bystander. She said as much in her message - granted she was really paraphrasing my summary of our characters from the night she shot me more or less at point blank in the chest, but never mind that: I _am_ a junkie who solves crimes to get high and you _are_ the doctor who never came home from the war. However, there are certain choices of words that I cannot quite decipher.

 _I know what you can become,_ she said. What we can _become_. Why would she express it that way? And why would she preempt this statement with its having anything at all to do with her being gone. _If I'm gone,_ she said. It's too particular to be a mistake. She wasn't prone to mistakes, not obvious ones, at least. She knows _who we really are and, if she's gone, what we could become_. Then she deflects that statement by telling us what we already know, using my words to explain our characters to us. Why not her own words? Why not summarise us in a context that is based on her observations, rather than mine? No, this is who we've ascribed ourselves to be, this is who we believe that we already are - it's not what we can _become_. What can we become? _What_? It's infuriatingly distracting to not know her true meaning. She goes on to say that it doesn't matter who we really are…

 _…people might talk…_

I know what I would want us to become, but I don't believe you want it. I will not believe it. There was a time, a brief time after we'd just first met, when I did. I barely registered that I did because the need I felt to have you close was much too foreign to me then, but in the need was a question of possibility that was as loudly posed as in any other being in want of the answer, only, throughout our partnership, as that need began to reveal itself to me, all your actions replied to the contrary, and once you were married I finally, and fully, consigned myself to acceptance of fact. It was easy enough: Mary made you happy.

Only now she's clearly pushing for you to move back to Baker Street, with your daughter in tow, telling you that she supports the choice, and the only reason she could possibly tell you this would be if it's the only place you'll be - how did you express it? - complete as a human being. If you could find greater happiness elsewhere, Mary wouldn't encourage your return to our scruffy flat and all our old habits. The contrary reply I thought was absolute is beginning to fray around the edges. It's making my edges fray alongside it.

You're the puzzle I can't solve. You're the riddle that never ends. I know you so well, and yet there are moments when I think…

Don't think.

x

How would it work? It wouldn't work. I'm starting to get seriously bloody irritated with myself because I'm still asking the same question and I keep giving myself the same answer and still it's a loop I can't bloody well get out of. I'm annoyed at Sherlock as well, the bloody git, for even suggesting that he could actually handle putting up with a baby. How _would_ it work? It wouldn't work. He's too set in his ways and he'd be clomping around at all hours, waking her up with his frustrated outbursts or cries of triumph and he'd be no help whatsoever. At the end of the day we'd be an inconvenience to him and he'd be a bloody hazard to us, because I know him, and he wouldn't be able to handle it. He's barely handled her since she was born and now he wants to play at being… How would it _ever_ bloody work?

It wouldn't.

But then I see my daughter on the stairs of Baker Street, in a summer dress, and those little shoes Mary bought for her to grow into, and she's reaching up to hold his hand and he's reaching down to hold hers back, helping her, steadying her, as she begins to climb the steps, and the image is so strong that I have to clench my jaws and make the conscious decision to get rid of it again. Because what if this would be a good thing? What if this would be the best thing that ever happened to him?

Him?

Why is everything I do somehow always done for Sherlock Holmes?

Not this. I'm not doing this. I'm not going back to him simply because he suggests that I do. I'm neither that stupid nor that insane, even though I'm clearly a little of both looking back at our friendship and all the bollocks that man has put me through. I'll find him using Rosie in one of his experiments. Christ's sakes, he's experimented on me without my even knowing it so what's to say he wouldn't find ample opportunities to evolve his methods on her? How does a baby react to chloroform? To ether? To bloody strychnine?

Of course, as soon as I've thought it, I also know that I already know he would never do anything to harm my child.

No, he'd be a bloody nuisance, is what he'd be. He'd baby proof _me_ , just to be sure I don't harm her unintentionally. He'd run identity checks on every person who ever comes within five feet of her and he'd be a nightmare once it's time to find a nursery school for her. She'd have to be homeschooled. Poor girl.

I can't keep a smile down.

It makes me aggravated again. Because this is what he does. Every single time I think I'm beginning to get my life in order here comes Sherlock Holmes and blows it all to bits, without breaking a sweat or pausing his stride or offering so much as a by your leave. And so here I am, stood on the kerb outside the well-known door, looking up at the windows of the sitting room, refusing to walk in there without feeling certain that the correct answer to how it would work is that it wouldn't.

It would not work.

I straighten my posture, readying myself for battle. Not so much with him, I realise, but with the longing for familiar spaces. Nothing for it but to face it head on.

I take a step forward, but the front door opens and Mrs Hudson stops on the stoop, all smiles.

"There you are," she says happily, putting her hands on my shoulders and giving my left cheek a kiss.

"Okay," I say, returning her smile, unsure of why I'm getting such a warm welcome.

"Come in, come in," she encourages and I do, closing the door behind me, quizzical frown still furrowing my brow. "You haven't seen it, have you? Come on, then," she says, getting her keys out as she heads for the door of 221C, the misgivings starting up immediately and she confirms them as she says: "Oh, it will be so wonderful to have a baby in the house, John. Of all the things that could've happened, I never thought! I'm so pleased you're moving back. You don't know what he puts me through on a daily basis and he's ever so much better with you around and now you'll be here. Oh, it'll be just like the good old days, won't it? Let's go down and—"

"I'm _not_ moving back in," I interrupt her and she pauses on the top step, surprise on her face.

"But Sherlock said—" she begins.

"I'm sure he _did_ ," I agree, containing my anger, but just barely. "But I'm not. I'm sorry, but I'm just not."

"Oh," she says, disappointment being replaced with trepidation as she glances down the stairs, clearly thinking of all the disturbing uses that room may now end up having.

I'm already halfway up to the first floor to confront my friend.

I find him in the kitchen, seated on a stool by the kitchen table, eyes on a dish filled with something half coagulated. There's deep expectancy on his face: he's about to have a result. I want to pick the dish up and throw it out the half-open window behind him.

"Hello, John," he says without taking his eyes off his project.

"I'm _not_ moving back in here," I state forcefully, even more annoyed with him for the room being freezing, stalking up to the window and shutting it with an anticlimactic thud.

"Oh," he says lightly. "Okay."

I take a short step closer to him, feeling like hitting the overly calm expression off his face for all the conviction he's presented me with that 'okay'. Okay? It bloody well is okay. I'll show him how okay it is for me to not live here, with him, in this constant state of controlled anger and brewing frustration. I remember how it was. Oh, I remember. Body parts in the fridge and guts in the freezer and the constant mess everywhere and sudden, impenetrable smells that would linger for a week, and the now closed window doesn't help, or fool me out of knowing that whatever that dish contains it's something disgusting and I'm not moving back into this with a perfectly innocent child.

"You've thought about it?" he now asks, leaning forward a fraction to get his nose a little closer to whatever the hell is occupying him, then he sniffs the air lightly.

"Yes, of course," I admit, glaring at him for making me even say it.

He straightens up, grabbing the dish and bringing it over to the sink before he begins to move gracefully around the kitchen, retrieving cups and teabags and preparing the kettle. I watch him, suddenly wavering between the very real and lingering anger, and the ease with which he can deflate it, fold it into something else, make me feel silly for even allowing it space at all. And still there's a sense of his manipulating me. So the anger won't fold away as neatly as all that.

He hands me my prepared cup as he brings his into the sitting room, taking a seat in his chair, waiting for me to claim the spot opposite. I do, sinking into the comfort of it, eyes meeting his as he observes me. I can feel a speech coming on, he's eyeing me the same way he was eyeing the dish a minute earlier, and then, just like that, like the flick of a switch, surrounded by nothing but this familiarity, it doesn't bother me. I become aware that I can't wait to hear what he's got to say. And that I want him to convince me, tell me all the reasons why this is the right choice: this chair in this sitting room in this flat with him.

"You've considered, I take it," he begins, "that your commute would be non-existent, as you would, in fact, live in your workplace, and you've, of course, added on the simple - yet probably most convincing argument - of having a baby sitter on hand, who's available all the hours of all the days of all the year, which further simplifies your need to be out the door at a moment's notice and allows you a flexibility living in Highgate doesn't offer you, and this, you must agree, severely impairs our work, not to mention - but I will - how it must add stress levels to your everyday life of which I cannot fully know - I deduce they must be way high; aside from these highlighted reasons for your leaving an area that is, granted, family friendly and low on crime, it should be added that there are affordable and excellent schools in Marelybone, as well as St John's Wood; there's every enmity a new parent could want - I Googled, extensively; and there's enough room here for the two of you, so, now, tell me your arguments for staying in a neighbourhood that must either bore you into new and late-night eating habits or boast an array of nondescript bakeries, because you've put on five pounds in less than four weeks and you're not around Mary's cooking anymore."

I stare at him once he's finished. He sips his tea, watching me coolly. Then I smile, and his eyes warm as he returns it.

"You're a cock," I then say, his smile widening.

"Blunt argument, I'm afraid," he replies. "I've always been a cock."

I smile in agreement, then put my cup aside, leaning forward, placing my elbows on my knees, bowing my head, feeling I can't look at him and think straight. So I follow the pattern of the carpet, I look at my shoes, placed on that carpet, where my feet have been planted so many times before. And I can't stop feeling elated at the very idea that I could choose this.

This is where I really began, and, God help me, this is where I keep ending up.

How will it work?

It will, because he says it will. I've believed in Sherlock Holmes since the moment I met him. Even when I was ready to turn my back on him for good, the thought filled me with such defeat I convinced myself it had to be the right thing to do. For Mary. How could I continue to follow this man after what he'd cost me? I blamed him and hated him and fought to shut him out of my head completely. I didn't want to think about him, but thought about him constantly, knowing he was possibly killing himself, knowing it was over Mary and being unable to give into the urge to go to him, to aid him in any way, even when the thought of losing him too didn't even bear considering. I just didn't deserve to be happy or fulfilled or breathing, especially not with him. Never again with him, that's what I kept telling myself over and over until Mary set me straight.

I don't know if Sherlock would agree with me, but I think I'm right in that Mary never left that first message for him, but for me. I've kept going over it, since that day in the hospital, when he lay in a hospital bed, half-dead even before he was nearly suffocated by Culverton Smith and his entire scheme was finally laid bare. And I knew I would forgive him. He didn't kill my wife. And my wife knew me. She almost knew me too well. She had lived a large life before meeting me and she must have felt it coming - she must have known that her time was running out, why else would she have recorded two messages, why else would she have posted them to arrive at intervals? I wish she would've told me, but she was too clever to think she could run away if she couldn't and she understood that - had I known - I would have stopped at nothing to keep her safe.

So many secrets between us, too many, perhaps, but then, also so much love.

She could see how, once she was gone, simply telling me to get on with my life wouldn't work. So she told Sherlock to wake me up, stop me digging myself a grave in that house, bring me back, knowing that I'd see the message, that Sherlock would know to make sure that I did, and through it she told me, in no uncertain terms, to get the bloody hell on with it. She made me save Sherlock to save myself. It makes me warm with gratitude towards her because the truth is, he's my family. He's more than that - he's closer to me than I can sometimes properly understand. She knew that and there was never any questioning it or wondering about it from her side, ever. She knew that I will continue to believe in him no matter what happens. No matter what he does or says. Because I know the kind of man he is. I've always known. He's a calculating, brilliant, annoying asshole with a hero complex to match his massive ego and a heart to outmatch both. And now, here he sits, asking me, convincingly, to come back home.

I glance at him, then away, unable to keep my eyes in his as I say:

"Okay."

I'm feeling disturbingly moved and I don't want him to see it, but I know that he does, no matter what I do to try and hide it.

"Okay," he murmurs.

x

"You look very nice," Mrs Hudson says as she enters the kitchen, the blessed tray with tea and ample plate of biscuits in her hands makes me want to kiss her forehead, while the intrusion, in equal measure, makes me want to usher her out of the room. My impatience is making it hard for me to stand still. "I suppose it is a special occasion," she adds to her meaningless commentary, smiling as she puts the tray on the kitchen table, suddenly pausing, looking wondering. "You've cleaned," she dazzles me with her observational skills and the urge for ushering her out of the room is rapidly beginning to tip the scale.

"Obviously," I merely reply, buttoning the button of my suit jacket and walking into the sitting room, hovering by the right hand side window as Mrs Hudson follows me.

"Where are all your things?" she asks, incredulous.

"Still here," I reply with a noncommittal wave to the room.

"But your bottles and the phials and the dishes, Sherlock - your chemistry things. Did you finally get rid of them?" she inquires, relief in her voice.

"Of course not," I say, annoyed at the mere suggestion. "I boxed them up. They're in my room." Off her nonplussed expression I add: "Well, we can't very well have breakable glass lined with poisonous substances lying about now there's a baby coming to live here, can we?"

"Oh, Sherlock," she says, her smile wider than ever before at the very mention of the new addition to the household.

I heave a soft sigh before I murmur:

"I suppose it was inevitable she'd have to come along."

It has the desired effect as she tuts and, thankfully, leaves me to my anxious waiting.

My throat is dry. I hesitate, trying to stave off the growing conviction that you've changed your mind. You're nearly an hour late. You're never late. You've texted me several times, cursing the hassle of trying to drive through London midday, and still I'm beginning to feel it's an excuse, and you're having second thoughts, and you're not coming at all. My fingers bring the lace curtain to the side as I gaze down on the empty street, feeling about ready to snap in two. I let the curtain go, turning from the drab view when the noise of a van pulling up to the curb makes me pause, the tension over my shoulders finally easing.

A minute later and you're climbing the stairs, describing what you're doing and where you're going and asking if it isn't nice, for no other reason than, I assume, Rosie's amusement and then you enter the sitting room with her on your arm, stopping as your eyes meet mine, a smile on.

"Bloody traffic," you say.

I return the smile, noting that your glance catches for a moment on the empty kitchen table, quickly scouring the place for any other glaringly obvious changes, but finding none as there aren't any to be had. Then your eyes run down my expensive suit, neither impressed nor surprised.

"So. Not helping?" you say, not even bothering to wait for a reply as you hand Rosie over and turn, heading back down the stairs to assist the men bringing in your boxes.

I look at Rosie and she looks back at me, a question there that I doubt any grownup can ever really answer, but I can at least follow your lead and explain the basic things surrounding her. Perhaps it will make the transition less bothering. If she's bothered by it. Very hard to tell.

"Hello, Rosamund," I begin. "You are in the sitting room. There's a sofa. There it is," I say, turning so that she can see it. She seems to observe it. "And windows, curtains, carpet, desk, lamp, chairs…" I trail off, eying the two chairs placed so conveniently opposite one another, warmed by the fire burning, and I contemplate the scene before I surmise: "Better get you one your size. Can you even sit in a chair?" I query, having her eyes in mine again.

Then she smiles, reaching up a hand to touch my eyelashes, for no apparent reason, and I have to smile as well.

"Careful," I say gently, taking a firmer hold on her as you reenter the room, carrying a box - heavy, filled with books - sliding it onto the desk, your head turned our way.

"She's not causing trouble, is she?" you ask, smiling at her.

"Nothing I can't handle," I reassure you, meaning it; your smile turned on me with an appreciative look in your eyes before you disappear again.

That look boosts my confidence to the point of actually trying out whether she can, in fact, sit in a chair. She's eight months and nine days and fairly sturdy, but not yet walking, and so I feel her chances might be fifty-fifty. I place her carefully on the seat of my chair, her back immediately straightening and she holds herself up remarkably well. I feel unreasonable proud of her accomplishment, but the fact of the matter is that six months ago she couldn't move from a blanket on the floor and now look at her progress. She begins to tip to one side, however, and I quickly move to support her with one hand, squatting down in front of her as it dawns on me that she's going to be a part of everyday life now.

And I really don't mind it.

Later that night you and I sit, toe more or less to toe, in our chairs, fire burning hot, the way you like it, each with a glass of scotch in hand after a dinner of mushroom risotto and garlic bread, which you cooked for us and Rosie shared with us, dropping most of hers on the floor, but I doubt even Mrs Hudson will make a fuss.

"What happened to the chemistry stuff?" you ask.

I taste the spirits in my glass, trying to rid you of your slight and questioning frown with a brief shrug.

"No," you say, holding a finger up as a warning. "We're not doing that. We're talking about this now because if you start changing things around—"

"I'm not changing things around," I disagree, growing mildly defensive.

"But you can't, you know, test your… theories. Or look for the… clues or do that… stuff… that you do."

"I can do that at Bart's," I say.

You stare at me at this disclosure. Mostly, I would assume, because you tried for a year to convince me to stop doing experiments in the flat and that they really ought to be conducted in a more controlled environment. Of course, no matter how right you were - in some respects - I fought you tooth and nail on the subject. I've always disliked being told what to do. But things are different now, I'm not changing them around solely for your sake, but for Rosie's, and ultimately my own, as well. How could you stay here if I didn't?

You fidget a little in your chair, having a mouthful of the liquor, swallowing it down, thinking. Then you look at me, the frown still lingering.

"We'll get one of those— what're they called? You know… Playpens," you say, brow smoothing at the epiphany and I give an amused huff, but you sit up, wanting me to hear you. "No, people have them— so we'll have one and— so that then you can still— Sherlock, you can't not have your things. You need your things. I know you. You'll lose your damn mind. And having to go to Bart's?"

"It's fine," I try again, but you're shaking your head now.

"It's not fine. You'll get bored of it," you say with conviction, eyes in mine, trying to persuade me that you're right about this.

"Maybe you don't know me as well as you think," I remark, having more of the whisky, feeling it burn its way down my throat.

"I think I've got a pretty good idea of who you really are," you retort self-assuredly and I have to smile.

Do you, now?

"So who am I, John - really?" I inquire.

You lean back in your chair, stretching your legs back out, looking at me with narrowed eyes, and I smile at your scrutiny.

"You're a genius who's a bloody idiot half the time, about a lot of things, is who you really are," you then say. "And a pain in the ass, is who you really are. And a controlling, manipulating… yeah, that — is who you really are. And I know it. I've lived it all before, lived _with_ it all before. And I'm not having you, three months from now, regretting ever asking me to come back here. Alright? I couldn't— So you put that— the— all of it where it was. No, I'll do it myself. Sherlock, don't."

But I rise with you, and make you sit back down again, leaning over you as I reach for and take your glass out of your grasp.

"I do believe you're drunk, doctor," I say gently, starting to feel a little light headed myself.

Three years. Ten months. Sixteen days. Since I fell. Since I died and thought that I'd ended this for good. Since I went away to fully dismantle the web of a spider, who had made it impossible for me to stay. The criminal who had found a way to me through my sister, my sister finding a way to me through him. His plotting and scheming and lust for revenge serving in leading me to her. Through breadcrumbs and blood.

 _Caring is not an advantage, Sherlock._

But there's something missing. There was always something missing. Something that was slipping out of my grasp, becoming increasingly difficult to identify, until you. You stepped into my world and began to rearrange its landscape, unintentionally, I'm sure, but you did, because your friendship was my first real taste of relying wholly on another human being, having you rely fully on me in return. No matter the arguments, disagreements, misunderstandings of those first few years, I fell from the roof of St. Bartholomew's so that you might live. I stayed away so that you might live. But I don't know if you can see how I came back for my sake, so that I might live again. It never crossed my mind - silly, really - that you wouldn't be waiting for me in Baker Street. I assumed you'd be overjoyed to see me, I assumed you'd be ready to pick up where we left off, I assumed many things, and watching you get into that cab with Mary, my nose bleeding and my lip cracked from your fury, rather than your exultation, put an end to my assumptions.

 _Emotional context…_

My sister was right, of course. It does destroy me every single time. When something personal, truly personal, is at stake, my mind becomes nothing more than a ruin, stood on a dark moor, in the middle of a raging storm.

I can't think.

Don't think.

You mutter something, eyes starting to droop with sleep, and I straighten up, eyes on your face for another moment before setting our glasses on the side table and walking up to my violin, picking up the slight instrument and placing it deftly beneath my chin, bringing the bow up to its strings, tryingly beginning to play a melody from memory.

I've heard it only once, walking down the cement halls leading to a glass cell in an island prison where my sister asked me to play something that would show her the innermost recesses of my mind, because she had just played me hers. I close my eyes as the notes begin to take the melancholy shapes of her constant exclusion. And then I begin to add notes of my own.

x

"So, you're back together, then?" Greg asks with a nod in Sherlock's direction and I glance over at my friend, kneeling by the base of the marble arch of Marble Arch.

"Whatever that means," I concede and we both raise our eyebrows in exasperated understanding, sharing a smile.

I leave Greg and walk over to Sherlock, who's just straightening up as I take the spot by his side. He points to the stones he's been inspecting, saying:

"There. What do you see?"

I look, then look a little closer.

"Scuff marks," I say, turning my eyes on him as Greg joins us.

"Well?" Greg says. "Murder?"

"Nope," Sherlock replies. "The man wanted to try his luck climbing up to the top without any security gear and fell just as he reached the roof of the arch."

"He wanted to climb to the top?" Greg exclaims, about to protest, only Sherlock is holding up his mobile to him.

"Alain Tremblay, French-Canadian professional rock climber comes to London as a tourist and had most likely planned to scale all the monuments, only this one proved fatal. An accident, Gordon, not murder," he finishes, slipping his mobile in his coat pocket and walking away without another word.

"You know he knows it's Greg," I try to smooth over. "He's just being an ass."

"Tell him thanks," Greg mutters, eyes on the base of the arch before he waves over the photographer.

A mere few hours later I watch Sherlock bend over a corpse on a slab in Bart's morgue, his small looking glass in front of his face as he meticulously searches for something to corroborate whatever theory he has in his head.

"Anything?" Molly asks, standing to one side, eyes flicking to me, then back to Sherlock.

Sherlock pauses by the hands of the dead man, then straightens up, shutting the looking glass with a sharp snap and turning to her.

"Notes?" he asks and she immediately hands over her clipboard. "There are trace scarring on his fingers. He worked in a medical laboratory. Rather than ensuring their employees aren't affected by the possibly harmful ingredients they come in contact with, the company has bought a stock of substandard protective gloves to save a few thousand quid on top of the billions they're already making off of keeping people in poor health. Inform the family. They'll want to sue," he states, handing the clipboard back and heading for the door.

I grant her a smile and she returns it.

"You look well," I offer.

"I am well," she nods, smile not faltering. "And you're all settled in?" she asks, a little tentatively and my smile widens, because who wouldn't be tentative at the thought of living with Sherlock Holmes.

"All settled. And happy to be back," I nod.

"I can tell," she says.

"Yeah," is all I can think of as a response.

The door slides open an inch, pushed by his hand and his voice comes through with a prompting:

"Come along, John."

"I'd better," I say with a slight hint of an apology, but she looks nothing if not understanding as I follow the encouragement and join him in the corridor, which he swiftly begins to head down. "Have you seen her?" I ask, referring to Molly. "Since Sherrinford?"

He glances at me over his shoulder, then says a simple:

"Yes."

And even though that puts an end to the topic, it makes me feel both relieved and a little taken aback. He's gone to speak to her, then, about what he told her in that locked room with the threat to her life hanging over his head. He's acknowledged her feelings, taken them into account and validated them by offering her an explanation. Has he ever done that before? Sentiment clouds reason, sentiment clouds reason, and he wants the skies to be eternally blue, doesn't he? But in the past year, there have been moments with him that I never thought I'd experience, not given what he was like when I first met him. And after the incidents with his sister…

He even cleaned the flat, for Christ's sakes.

Well, he cleaned the kitchen, but that's more or less the same thing for him. He never cleaned the kitchen. Not once while I lived there with him did he actually put anything away. He likes ordered chaos. He likes things to be accessible and out in the open, never knowing what might set his deductions off. A fork catching the light of the sun or the book he propped up, for some reason, against the bellow of the fireplace or the way a sheet of paper has one corner sticking out over the edge of the desk. The littlest, most remarkable details. At first he was driving me insane, and then, as our days together wore on, those things being left as they were became second nature to me, too.

But now he's trying to be considerate of the people close to him. It's not all about him anymore, it's not all about grandstanding to take the edge off the boredom, it's not all about that need to be the cleverest person in the room. It will never go away completely, thank God, because then he wouldn't be him anymore, but taking a more human approach to the client aspect of the casework is something I've at least attempted to instruct him in, certain that it could only make him better at what he does, and as certain that he's only listened to my input on a handful of occasions.

 _Don't solve the murder - save the life._

I have to smile at the possibility of my influencing him even in the slightest. It's hard for me to believe it, even when he's asserted it himself. He's never liked being told what to do. And, of course, he's still a right ass half the time. That thought makes my smile widen.

We return to Baker Street in the later part of the evening and I lead the way up the stairs, taking off my jacket as we enter the sitting room, quietly enjoying the knowledge of Rosie being in good hands and out of the flat. I adore her the way you can only ever adore your own child, but to have the freedom to stay up late and sleep in tomorrow is relaxing in a way no non-parent can ever understand.

Sherlock has disappeared into his bedroom - to fetch his robe, no doubt - and I kick off my shoes before kneeling by the fireplace to get it lit. I hear him entering the kitchen.

"Scotch?" he asks and I remember the headache a few days back.

"God, no," I decline, flames beginning to dance where I've coaxed them to and I stand up.

"Tea it is," he says, beginning to prepare two cups.

I watch him with a wave of nostalgia washing over me and suddenly I feel how truly happy I am to be a fixed part of his life again, to have him be a fixed part of mine. I never would have thought, never for one moment, that I'd be here again. The year after he fell from that damned roof passed in some sort of dense fog and I couldn't bear to return here once I'd made the choice to leave. The thought of this place without him was too much for me. His chair, alone and abandoned and nothing but a piece of furniture; the rooms empty of him tearing through them, instructing me to help in his search without actually telling me what the hell I'm supposed to be looking for. Stepping into the reality of the silence he'd left behind would have meant that he was gone, truly gone. I couldn't face that. For so very long, I couldn't.

The city felt dead and I felt dead with it.

I wonder if he has ever understood that. I wonder if he could actually ever comprehend what losing him did to me.

Of course he can't, the cock.

He comes over, cups in hand, reaching one out to me, frowning lightly as he asks:

"What's funny?"

I shake my head, taking the cup, raising it in a slight toast as thanks before bringing it to my mouth to blow on it. When he sinks down in his chair I have the smile back on, his frown returning as well, but I merely look at him with all the warmth I feel for him and soon it reflects itself back at me as his expression softens.

"You did good work today," I say.

He's rather unimpressed, but he did leave the house for two of three cases that were well below seven and I look at that as further proof of his progress. Perhaps the days of sending me out in a muddy field with a bloody laptop are actually behind us.

"No, I haven't said it in a while and you were… amazing. You really were," I say. "And the money we'll get from this latest case is going to be good. Very good. We can make rent for the next few months _and_ buy that new push chair. You know, the one that's really easy to…"

His smile broadens then, and I trail off, mirroring his expression, shaking my head at how things are so much of the same and still so much of the very different.

"Where is Rosie?" he asks, one leg folded across the other, relaxing into this latest success.

"With your parents," I reply, leaning back as he sits straight, frown creasing his brow with his apprehension.

"My parents?" he sputters.

I don't think I've ever heard him sputter.

"They came by to say they're staying at Mycroft's while he's away, heard me asking Mrs Hudson to take Rosie and they offered," I try to get the soft panic off his face. "They did have three children, I'm sure they'll be fine with her."

"I'm not worried about _them_ , I'm worried for _her_!" he yells, getting to his feet. "She'll be ruined for life. Get your shoes back on, for God's sakes, John, we have to go and get her."

I can't help but be rather amazed at how serious he is and it takes me another minute to convince him that we're not going anywhere and that I desperately need a full night's sleep and I'm not worried for Rosie - she's never minded strangers and she's always been a good sleeper. She'll be fine. He drags taut fingers over his mouth in agitation, but I can tell he's beginning to relent, putting his hands on his narrow hips as he says:

"They've wanted grandchildren for decades. We'll never be rid of them now."

I smile at the expression on his face as it reminds me of the one he wore the day I asked him to be my best man. The day I told him he's my best friend. Only this time his mind isn't processing something quite as befuddling, but is running over the possible scenarios in which we're going to have to avoid his parents, already putting the schematics in place - with contingency plans, an array of them. Ever the problem solver.

It makes me think of mine and Rosie's first morning here, a week or so back, when I left him alone with her while I ran out to get some milk and found him, once I'd returned, seated in front of her high chair with flashcards and, off my frown, his trying and failing to placate me by explaining:

"It's how they teach monkey's to communicate. I assure you, it's perfectly safe."

"Right. Yeah, my daughter isn't a monkey, though," I pointed out.

"Don't be silly, John, of course she isn't," he very calmly replied. "Although, I believe we would have reason to be concerned if she fails to exhibit the communicative skills of a basic primate."

"She's eight months old, for Christ's sakes," I hissed at him, getting the flashcards away from him with an incensed: "Give those here," and that was that.

Only now I feel he'll be more determined than ever to make sure she understands his every last warning with regards to listening to anything his parents have to say. I would argue Mycroft is the real danger in that family. Even with Eurus actually trying to kill me. She wouldn't have ever gotten the chance to if it hadn't been for the elder Holmes.

Sherlock pointing a gun at his brother's chest flashes through my head and I blink it away, eyes on him as he's retaken his seat, drinking his tea, gazing into the fire, content, I think, to enjoy the quiet. When did he start doing that? I can honestly say I don't remember. We had quiet nights, but usually that was because his mind was furiously occupied with piecing together evidence or braiding story strands out of whatever images he'd logged in his memory bank. Now he looks actually fine with having just a cup of tea to entertain him.

"How's your sister?" I ask, hoping it won't agitate.

It doesn't. He moves his eyes in mine before he says:

"Mycroft tells me there's no change. She won't speak. She's not catatonic, she's closed herself down."

"Yeah, but is that possible?"

"Apparently," he says mildly and I smile, a little apologetic at the stupidity of the question, but he seems to know what I meant by it as he continues: "The brain can be a rather fickle ally. The constructs we use to leash our impulses can and will, in moments of weakness, turn on us, and if determining we're not of a sound mind to make conscious decisions, our subconscious takes over, and offers oblivion. I brought her down, out of the skies, only to ground her back in the prison that forced her up there. I don't think she has the fortitude to break out of it. Not by herself, anyway."

"So," I say, "you'll help her."

"Working on it," he concedes.

"You'll figure it out. You always do."

He nods, drifting into thought and I leave him be for a while, finishing my tea, my mind wandering until it lands on something I've actually wanted to ask him for a while, having skirted voicing the question for this long because we've had such a tumultuous year and a half, to say the least, but now, here - facing him like so many other nights - I suddenly need, more than anything, to hear his answer.

"Why didn't you tell me you died on the operating table?" I therefore say, his eyes moving to mine as he frowns, questioning that statement, which makes me elaborate: "When Mary shot you. You were dead for almost a minute. Why didn't you tell me?"

He's surprised, I can tell - though I can't see why. I am a bloody doctor, aren't I? And, moreover, I'm listed as his emergency contact and have easy access to his medical files. Of course I've read them. He just doesn't know how long I've known. He finds his equilibrium quickly, observing me for a handful of seconds before he finally says:

"Because it didn't matter."

"How could it not matter?"

"Because I didn't stay dead."

I watch his face for a few long moments and then I draw a breath to steady myself, having to take my eyes out of his as I begin to finally see the pattern of events. And I understand why my wife, the trained assassin, would take a kill shot of the one person standing between her and the safety of her family.

"She never missed, did she?" I say, his gaze steady in mine. "Avoiding your heart, all that, that wasn't true, was it? She went there to get the information Magnussen had on her - or kill him if he refused. Then we showed up…"

"Yes," he says slowly. "Then we showed up."

"She couldn't kill him with me there - it'd implicate me. That's what you said. That's how you explained it. So she shot you instead."

I pause at the memory of all that blood, leaking out of the hole in his chest, staining his shirt, soaking the carpet of Magnussen's office and my worthless fingers unable to do anything to staunch the flow. It took me a long time to let the panic of that moment go. The violence behind Mary's lies shook my trust in her in ways that could have been irreparable because of that moment. It took me that much longer to forgive her because of the sickening feeling of losing him again, for good this time, and the flashback to the pavement where he hit the ground and I couldn't save him.

"Magnussen told you precisely how it worked," he says, as though nearly dying is an occupational hazard he's gotten used to, his tone matter of fact, but there's something… "He wanted control of Mycroft: I'm my brother's pressure point, you're mine, Mary was yours. With me gone the chain was broken and Magnussen had no use for whatever he had on her. He couldn't get to Mycroft without me. He was a blackmailer, not a murderer. Mary knew that. It wasn't premeditated, John. She was cornered into making a decision and she made it to protect you. And Rosie."

And there it is, that something.

"You're lying to me," I state.

"What? No, I'm—"

"You are lying, Sherlock," I interrupt. "You left the hospital, you almost died - again - to make sure we'd stop that man and you're telling me we would have been safe from him? Mary didn't _know_ that we'd be safe - she gambled, she _hoped_ that we would be. Isn't that right? And then you went and shot him in the head."

I stare at him, beginning to understand, beginning to see exactly how much I owe him. The shock of it, of his loyalty to me, to my family, makes me have to draw another breath. It shouldn't be this acutely felt - he's done things throughout our friendship that have convinced me of how I mean a great deal to him, otherwise I doubt I'd have… He took that shot to save Mary, only I've always rationalised the decision to have as much to do with his brother and himself as anything else. But he did that to protect her even after she… I have known that he cares much more than he lets on - but this… He didn't tell me what she'd done because he knew I would never have been able to trust her again. Even without him telling me, it took me months to reach a place where I could let the past be in the past and reach the point where I wanted to put our family first again, where I was able to stop being torn between the two deepest loyalties of my life.

I feel my knuckles ache as a ghost sensation appears from when I hit him, hard, in that morgue, making him bleed for all the pain and all the suffering and all the black regret. And I feel all that anger I directed at him, because I convinced myself he broke another promise in letting her die for him, when I knew, deep down, that of course he didn't let her do anything. Just as I'm beginning to see a string of decisions that have all been taken for my sake.

My God, he's put me through hell in order to keep me safe.

"No more lying," I say, forcing back the building emotion with some effort. "I can't have anymore of it. Do you hear me? It damn near destroyed what Mary and I had— it damn near destroyed what you and I have and I've forgiven you. Every time, because you are my closest—… but if you keep things from me, things like this, I swear—"

"I know," he interrupts me, voice low, gaze steady in mine.

"Good," I say.

"I'm sorry," he adds.

"No, that's good," I say, feeling odd and self-conscious and disliking it.

He's watching me, watching my face, the minutia of my expression probably telling him more about what I'm thinking than I'm even aware of myself.

"I told you everything about Mary that was important for you to know," he says and I can tell he's not entirely convinced I'm good with any of it.

"You told me to trust her," I say.

"She was your wife," he returns, the statement carrying a finality with it that I wouldn't have expected.

Was it really that simple for him?

"Yes, my wife. So never mind me, how could _you_ trust her after that?" I demand.

"She was pregnant," he says dismissively. "Her decision was made in a state of severe hormonal imbalance. I was actually rather surprised she didn't shoot me in the head."

I give a laugh at this unconcerned assessment of her actions, knowing that he trusted her because she could be trusted, nothing more, nothing less, and the tension eases.

"I've been composing…" he trails off, suddenly looking unsure. "Will you listen?"

He usually doesn't ask and I frown a little at him, but nod that, yes, of course, I'll listen. He stands, goes to his violin, checking its in tune before easing it below his chin, the bow whispering through the air and soon its music fills the room.

It's a melody I recognise, I've heard him playing it a few times since I moved back in. The slow, melancholy beginning always reminds me of how I felt before meeting him, stuck in that bleak studio flat, with a narrow bed and a plain desk and I was slowly, slowly fading into its drabness, swallowed up by its colour palette into something else, someone else, but Sherlock saw past it and drew me back into focus. He reminded me of who I was, of who I am, and he made me into something more. I wonder, sometimes, if he feels I've done the same for him. If I've made more of him than what he was before we met.

The melody is changing character, beginning to resemble the chase we had today, that frenzied excitement, that rush of adrenaline, and I want to ask him what the piece is called, what's inspired it, why he's composing it, why it's taking him so long because I don't think he's finished yet. But I'll ask later. For now I feel content to sink back into my chair, knitting my fingers together on my stomach, resting my eyes on his back for a moment longer, before closing them.

x

I reach the final note - knowing there are more to be added, still finishing with a flourish, turning around to face you, my brow furrowing and I step up to your chair, poking you, rather brutally, in the chest with the tip of the bow. The action makes you jerk awake and sit up, eyes in mine as you blink up at me.

"It's nice," you then offer sincerely.

"You fell asleep," I reproach, returning the instrument to its perch.

"No, no," you begin, but you know it's futile and you sink back in your chair with a huff. "Yeah, I did," you admit, which makes my cheek crease in a half-smile. "Heard most of it, though, I think. It's nice," you repeat, as sincerely, and I look over at you, your hand itching the spot where I poked you moments before, and I think I should apologise, only to in the next moment, suddenly, feel inexplicably warm all over.

It's enough to send me out of the sitting room, into my bedroom to retrieve my mobile.

Eight cases solved in the past three days. Well, I say eight when really it was one case and seven minor inconveniences for the Metropolitan Police. Nothing they couldn't have solved themselves - eventually. I just had to get us out of the flat. I had to have something to do, something to distract me away from the constant and unsettling impulse to touch you.

It's been there for weeks now. For longer than that, perhaps, but not like this. I thought having you back here would ease it, would make the longing for you abate. It hasn't. It's making it worse, steadily increasing my need for more. More of you, more of your time and company. I'm in a constant state of awareness of where you are, of what you're doing, of where you might be going, feeling brazenly possessive of you and it's gone far enough already. This impulse. It's beginning to carry with it an insistent refusal to see any sort of reason. I don't understand it at all. And so I keep bringing you beverages, as though that could be a viable substitute for not knowing what, exactly, to do with myself.

I reenter the kitchen, mobile in hand, having absolutely no good use for it other than that it took me out of the room for a few moments, my eyes going to the back of your head, visible above the backrest of your chair.

"Tea?" I say, rolling my eyes at my own patterned stupidity.

"No, I'm good," you reply. "Thanks."

I linger, useless phone in one hand, as I try to gather myself.

It's a strange and bewildering place that you've brought me into, a world not at all like my own, and I've avoided it out of fear for this precisely: losing myself. Only, I didn't have a choice with you, did I? You steered me here, into a country lit up by these glittering constellations of confusion, steered me without hesitation, because you know your way around and you brought me with such ease that it happened without my realising it, without my beginning to even grow aware of it before I was already too deeply entrenched to make my own way back out again. I don't have a map. There is none to be had. It's always frustrated me out of exploration before and now I'm stuck.

I can't move.

The games afoot and I can't even guess at the rules, the pain of losing far outweighing the slight possibility, the off chance, of standing victorious. I need your steady hand to guide me, but I daren't reach out and take it. I wish you could understand, I wish that you could see what you've done, digging through me and uncovering my best hidden secret, unveiling this lie that I've kept telling myself, that I do not love anything, when really there's nothing I love, or will ever love, as much as I love you.

…glittering constellations of confusion and I can't think.

Don't think.

"What're you doing?" you ask, turning your head to give me a quizzical look.

"Hmh," I reply, waving the phone noncommittally as I move, I do move, to reclaim my chair, my place, opposite you.

"New text?" you ask and I can tell there's a hint of teasing in your tone, but this time it doesn't make me uncomfortable - it begins to slowly focus me.

"Why is sex important?" I therefore ask, actually wondering what your answer is going to be, trying not to look it, trying to feign cool and control, a mere inquiry, nothing to do with how my skin has started to hum in your presence, under your gaze, as you eye me, thoughtful.

"How do you mean?" you wonder.

"I understand why sex is necessary," I answer, "but why is it important?"

You raise your eyebrows, asking if I'm actually serious. I keep my eyes in yours, my silence affirmative enough. You're quiet for a few moments, thoughtful again, and I wonder if you're going to brush the question off, my heart pounding heavily in my chest at the mere possibility, but your eyes rest in mine, and I can see the shift where you decide to accommodate this clear whim of mine, as you have so many others, as you say:

"Sex means being intimate with another human being. Sex isn't about… going through the motions, even though, don't get me wrong, that's hopefully fun, too, but it's about… connecting, about feeling… more than you can ever feel by yourself. And if you have that— share that with someone you— …but, listen, loving someone, being in love with the person, isn't really… but it makes it—… And yeah, it's messy and sweaty and sometimes you don't know what the hell is happening and by the end of it you'll forget who you are and what you want and you'll just be in that moment with this other person. But that… that's something else than— I can't tell you what it's like, Sherlock. I just know it's good. Good for you. High Wickham could be… good for you."

"Really? I think you're the one who called the woman a lunatic and a criminal and insanely dangerous. How is that going to be good for me?"

"Ah, yes, but the truth is - the _truth_ is - you text her back," you're teasing me again, but if I was reading anyone else's face, I'd say there was a trace of jealousy in your expression, the softest accusation, possibly because I've been tight-lipped about it until you caught me out.

"Only in weaker moments," I say, unable not to bait you into this discussion, too curious to see where it will lead, now that I've gotten us this far.

"Weaker moments?" you raise your eyebrows.

I feel whatever control over the conversation I thought I had begin to slip away under your playful expression, secure in your supreme understanding of the particular subject. I'd go so far as to call you smug and surmise that you're enjoying this rather a little too much.

"Oh, for God's sakes, John," I snap, tired of it now, deciding to answer the question you're really asking as I add: "I am _not_ in love with Irene Adler."

"But you feel something. Clearly. Why else would you text back? Why else would you have saved her life?"

"I don't know. To pass the time?" I offer, but you give me a truly scolding frown, telling me I can't expect you to, for even a second, buy that. "She has my deepest respect," I try, but you interrupt the building speech with a shake of your head, sitting a little straighter and I preempt your need to interpose with a sharp: "Why do you find it so impossible to believe that I don't need a sexual relationship at all? I've always found the proposition of expunging vast amounts of energy on an act that can't possibly—"

"Because I know you, Sherlock," you interrupt me and I can tell you're about to lose your temper with me. Why is this so important to you? You contain your frustration with me and say: "Mary thinks she knows who you really are? A junkie who solves crimes to get high? But I know that's not who you are - that's what you can do, the stuff that keeps you going… You're more than— You are not a bloody sociopath. Okay? You care about people, you just won't let yourself— Jesus bloody Christ, why won't you? Just let yourself live for once in your bloody life. Because, trust me, what you think of as living doesn't even come close. Not even _close_."

You're glaring at me, wanting me to see your side of it, wanting to make a point that might pierce my convictions once and for all.

I draw breath, then - to tell you.

I almost told you twice before, once before boarding that plane that was to spirit me away, feeling a surging need to have you at least know, for better or worse, what I had understood the moment you called me out on my behaviour after our first exchange at Bart's: that you would make me better, that you would make me want to be better, do better. And I would have told you again, the night you said goodbye to Mary, only you interrupted me with your admittance, the guilt you'd been carrying finally being spoken out loud, and all I could do then was allow the moment to get lost in your grief.

You can't see it.

Not even when you're saying it to my face, can you see it: how you've taught me to be the man you've always thought I could become.

So how could I tell you? How can I tell you when you won't see for yourself?

You're rubbing your fingers across your eyebrows the way you do when your patience is wearing so thin you feel the need to leave the room. You believe it's a lost argument. You long for some much deserved rest, I can tell. It's been a full day, I made sure of that. But I don't want you to go, not just yet. Only, I'm too late in finding a reason to have you stay, I'm too late in finding the right thing to say, and you slap both hands on your knees and stand. I follow your movement, standing as well.

… all these glittering constellations…

"Well, with that, I'm off to bed," you say, moving - you're moving away - and I interrupt your progress by reaching out my hands, placing them on either side of your face, having your eyes in mine and I'm not thinking, your jawbone against my palms and the strands of your short hair tickling my fingertips as I pull you to me, my lips meeting yours.

…yearning like a flooding river…pulse like a dull vibration…but remarkable…

…how the world slows and my senses become heightened into something else entirely. Your hands have moved up to clasp my wrists, and I'm aware now of how tightly you're holding on. The surprise has rendered you indecisive, unable to pull away and unwilling to do anything but stay perfectly still and I know I have to let you go… I have to let go.

I end the kiss, but my pulse is rampaging through my veins and your taste has filled my head with all sorts of astonishing ideas and I barely pull away from you. I have to linger. I have to make it last for another second, and another. A handful more. If I've broken us, I can't know just yet.

And so the tip of my nose still rests by the side of yours and my hands still cradle the back of your head in a hold I fear is too tight, but I can't release you, I daren't open my eyes, I don't want to move if you're not moving.

My mind is utterly numbed by impressions, but my body, my body is honed in on yours, on how your short, quick breaths tickle across my lips, your fingertips pressed against the skin of my wrists, where my mounting fear and equal exhilaration is on display for your used touch to discover. But you're still not moving.

What are you thinking? What do you want? You don't want this. You don't want it. The conviction is like a shattering of glass in my chest and I draw a shaky breath. How could I have been so reckless? Now I have lost you, and more than that, I have lost all hope of you. I want to ask you to forgive me, to forget this ever happened, I want to explain it away, but I can't lie to you now, I can't speak, I dare hardly breathe anymore.

I have to let you go.

I begin to loosen my grasp, pulling back when I'm stopped by you, moving your head forward and your mouth claims mine, firmly and without any trace of hesitation. There's an instantaneous and almost vicious shock of desire rippling through me. Your hands clasp my upper arms, run up to my shoulders, you pull yourself closer to me, your chest connecting with mine as your tongue teases my lips apart and you deepen the kiss with startling effect.

Fire in every last recess, spreading a heatwave, but it isn't destruction and desolation, its beyond words what you are doing to me.

Your right arm slips around my shoulders, your left hand by the side of my face, your thumb stroking itself over my cheek before your fingers slide back, into my hair, curling themselves into thick locks and sending shivers of pleasure through my entire body. I feel weak and inside out and breathless and disoriented and absolutely wrapped up in this one moment to moment to moment as I slide my hands up your back, responding to you without a second thought, and still thinking that I don't know what I'm doing.

I don't know what I'm doing, but I know I want you to show me what to do. If you show me the way, I'll follow you anywhere.

You end the kiss slowly, resting your forehead against mine, our eyes still closed, breath catching breath, and I know you're holding onto me for the same reason I'm holding onto you. We're in the eye of this sudden storm I've put us in, moored together, in the vastness of it, but we've chosen it and we can't undo it now. I don't want to. Please.

Please, I don't want to…

I can't wait anymore. I can't stand not knowing what you're thinking. I pull my head back, and your eyes meet mine. You look bewildered, and rattled, and needful and then you give the hint of a smile, and it reaches your eyes, and I've never experienced anything like this, like the happiness that unfurls where it's been kept, in tight restraints, out of sight, until now.

Until you.

Your focus drifts to my mouth and I revel in your expression for a brief moment before I lean down and let my lips meet yours again. Softly. Wanting to savour you. Your hands slide over my shoulders to my chest, to the buttons of my shirt, and when you take a few steps back I follow your movement, stumbling a little over your feet and there's soft laughter, your mouth still against mine, and I deepen the kiss, making your arms wrap tightly around me again and I sense then that I make you feel just as weak and inside out, that I'm taking your breath away and it's everything - this sudden, needed proximity, this absolute closeness.

We stagger, locked together, into the kitchen, against the wall, against the fridge, your hands untucking my shirt, your fingers sliding under it, along my lower back and I can't stop a soft groan and we stumble into the hallway, against the closed door of my bedroom and I can't get your buttons undone, my fingers are trembling, but I can feel you trembling underneath them and you kiss my neck and I get the door open and I don't know anything and I'm frightened and safe and rapt and losing myself completely in you and I hope, with all that I am, that I never have to come back again.

x

The most ridiculous things.

This has to be the most ridiculous thing that we've… Christ. What happened? What the hell happened? This happened. He happened. When? How? The questions are coming at me from all sides, all at once, but I can't stop grinning like an idiot, eyes running along the edges of Sherlock's ceiling for no other reason than that I can't go back to sleep, now that I've woken up, and I've never actually been in this position before, where I was lying down and able to look up at his ceiling. His bedroom ceiling. The smile widens again.

His scent - some darker note of fennel, with a hint of some other spice I can't quite place - surrounds me, and acts as an anchor into how I feel… How do I feel? I feel like I've been told the secret that holds the universe together, like I now know more than anyone else ever has or ever will and the knowledge doesn't startle or upend anything, it doesn't even create worry with all the inevitable questions vying to be heard. There's nothing but calm. Apart from these bursts of giddiness that make my smile turn into a grin every few minutes and has laughter bubbling in my chest.

The most ridiculous thing.

But my hands running over exposed skin and his mouth against mine and his frailty handed over to me without any real understanding of what it meant for him to trust me like that, for him to want me so completely, that was anything but ridiculous. That was something that heats up my blood and makes my pulse pick up its pace. His hands either side of my face… My God. I thought I would pull away. For one billionth of a second that felt like it lasted forever I thought I can't. I can't do this. And then he must have felt that I was thinking it because he started to move away and it was like having blinding fireworks of objection going off in my head at the thought of him letting go of me, as though I'd already gotten used to having him close and if he weren't anymore… He had to stay close. And so I kissed him back.

What a fucking revelation.

That thought makes my smile broaden and I give a soft huff of a laugh, unable to keep it fully down, because I'm happy. That's what it is, isn't it? This state I'm in. I'm filled up with it - this almost excruciating happiness, sharp in how real it is, how new and raw and complete. I don't know what I'm doing.

I turn my head to look over at him where he's sleeping. Soundly, of course, since his bed is a hell of a lot more comfortable than mine. I don't mind. I've slept, too. I don't even know what time it is, but it's light outside the window. I don't really care. I feel like staying in this quiet for as long as possible, but I also feel like shaking him awake. Will he look at me in the same way, or will the questions in his head get too loud for him?

No, I won't let them.

I almost move closer, I almost rest my chin against his naked shoulder, I almost move my head forward to kiss the stretched tendon of his neck, make him say something, do something, make him kiss me good morning.

Ridiculous.

I look back at the ceiling, battling the mirth again.

"Will you stop moving, John, I'm—" he murmurs, interrupting himself as there are steps up the stairs and suddenly our eyes meet in unified alarm.

"Woo-hoo," Mrs Hudson says, entering the kitchen.

I have the thought in my head of her walking into a completely different scenario than the empty room greeting her this morning and I know he's thinking the exact same thing. I look away from him, but it's too late - it's set us off, both of us stifling the fit of giggles as best we can, trying desperately to stay quiet. When we hear her steps move from the kitchen into the corridor we sober up immediately, looking back at each other and agreeing in one word exactly what she's doing:

"Laundry."

It's Saturday. She does our laundry - whether we want her to or not - on Saturdays. She's reaching for the door knob, I know it, and before she has a chance to twist it - because it's not locked, why would it be - I get out of bed, grabbing hold of it and having her give a soft exclamation in surprise.

"Don't worry yourself about the laundry today, Mrs Hudson," I say, Sherlock frowning in immediate reprove and I realise what I've just done.

"John?" she asks.

"Yes, good morning," I say.

"Is Sherlock home?"

"No," I reply without even pausing and Sherlock's frown deepens. "Shit," I curse. "I mean, not shit, just… Mrs Hudson, no laundry today, thanks."

He has a smile on his mouth now, the sod. I glare at him, but he shrugs that I got myself into this and he's beginning to enjoy watching me get myself out of it.

"Well, that's just silly," she says. "What are you doing?"

"I'm getting something," I reply, his smile widening and I just want her to go away. "For Sherlock. For a case," I lie haltingly and I know she can hear it in my voice, which is why she's staying put.

"John Watson, am I going to have to tell you off for being in Sherlock's room without permission?"

"No," I shake my head, unable to keep a smile of my own down. "No, you won't have to do that."

"Good. Then open the door."

I look around for something, anything, and manage to get hold of the item of clothing closest to me - Sherlock's robe, crumpled in a heap on the floor. I keep my foot firmly against the door as I pull it on, his eyebrows rising high and I raise mine in return as a query of what does he suggest I do, then, before gesturing to the door with a meaningful frown, knotting the belt, and at that simple movement a look comes over his face so new I almost forget what I'm supposed to be doing, for a breath about to get back in bed, but seeing sense and opening the door a few inches, noting him taking the precaution of getting out of bed as well, dragging the sheet with him as I slip out into the corridor, effectively pushing Mrs Hudson to take a few steps back, the door shutting behind me.

"Mrs Hudson, really, no laundry - you're not our housekeeper, are you, after all? Go, enjoy your weekend. _Really_ ," I say, realising the next moment, her eyes running down me, exactly how this must look if what I've been telling her is, in fact, true, and Sherlock isn't home.

She draws a breath to say something more, but seems to change her mind.

"Okay, dear," she says, a concerned wrinkle between her brows as she finally turns and makes herself scarce, her steps soon retreating downstairs.

I put my forehead against the wall, drawing a deep breath to steady myself, my hand resting on the doorknob. Of his bedroom. Where he is, waiting.

He's waiting.

I open the door, stepping through it, my eyes on him, sheet over his shoulders, and I close the door again, his eyes in mine. I can't keep a smile off at his appearance, remembering all the times I've seen him wrapped in that sheet before, too impatient to bother getting dressed, finding it, as he always put it, a tedious practice when there are more pressing matters at hand. Been a while since the last time, though.

The sudden fear comes over me that he'll revert back to all his old habits, that his mind won't be able or willing to handle this situation he created and will find a way of placing it in some locked room or dungeon or tower and forgetting about it.

No. No, I won't let him.

Then his expression softens into something altogether aware of last night, and he smiles as well, sending tendrils of heat through my chest that pool themselves, pleasurably, into my stomach.

"Hungry?" he asks.

"I could eat, yeah," I say, my smile broadening.

I go up to my room to put a fresh change of clothes on, those from last night gathered in a ball against my chest. Picked up off the floor of his bedroom. The mere thought puts the grin back on and I shake my head at myself. His robe is still around me, his scent still on my skin, offering that sweet sort of intoxication, that need that is the beginning of all good things. Only good things. And when I've dressed, and I pick his robe up to take it back downstairs and I catch myself bringing it to my face, breathing him in, I think fuck.

I fucking love him.

And I really fucking want this.

And the clarity of it makes the stakes rise sky high in the blink of an eye, my heart quickening at the thought of it, and still… And still, there's a restfulness. Because there's the memory of his touch, his response to mine, and with that comes the hope that this is it. This is finally it.

I don't know when or what formed the base for this, but whatever fix he's provided me, for whatever addiction I may be guilty of, how I'm feeling right now has nothing to do with what he does, and everything to do with who he is. If he wanted to move to some remote island and raise bloody turkeys and live a quiet, secluded life, I would go with him in a heartbeat. I don't function without him. Even Mary could see that…

 _If I'm gone…_

I frown, standing still, drawing a breath. She's been gone for less than four months. My beautiful, funny, loving, secretive, dangerous wife, and the last thing she sent me was a love letter addressed not to me, but to my partnership with Sherlock.

I don't know whether I should be comforted by it, or discomforted. How long had she known? How long had she seen it, somewhere in the peripheral, for her to send me such a final seal of approval? I remember Sherlock's silence after we first saw it, the way he was looking at me taking on a whole new meaning in the afterglow of last night. …How long has he felt this?

Memories quickly crowd together, looked at from new angles, and I wonder… I wonder, but what does it really matter? Someday I'll ask him, but not today.

I head downstairs, leaving the robe hanging over the banister when he exits from the kitchen onto the landing, impeccably dressed, as ever, coat and scarf on, but his hair is still ruffled. He hands me my jacket as he heads, without pause, down the stairs I almost want to reach out and grab at his coat where it rests between his shoulder blades, pull him to slow, pull him to me. But I leave him be, following him as so many times before, enjoying making the choice, deciding one way or another, feeling a gentle power in it, and the slight novelty of equal footing.

We step into sunshine and city noise and I regret it instantly. All I want to do is turn right back around, go back to his room, to his bed, but I don't. I follow him across Baker Street, into the subway taking us under the busy Marylebone Road, and back onto Baker Street where it now stretches all the way down to Oxford Street, and, of course, I know where he's headed: the chippy. We've always gotten fish and chips from this place after late night casework. He orders for us both, knowing what I want, and all I can think of is stepping close, of burying my face against his neck, of dragging my lips along his jawline, of making him say my name and getting his clothes off him to continue the exploration we began last night.

He's as aware of me as I am of him. I can tell because he's not looking at me.

He grabs the bag of food, turns and heads back the way we came. I can't keep a smile down, enjoying the warmth of the sun on my skin, eyes drifting to the back of his head, the black of his curls, his narrow shoulders, his long fingers gripping the bag, and when we finally reach the door of our flat I feel a rush of worry that we'll have a client waiting, or his brother - no, he's away - what time is it? When were the Holmes' bringing Rosie back?

He unlocks the door and continues through it. I follow him, closing it behind me, watching him head upstairs, disappearing from sight, before I walk in his footsteps and enter the sitting room just as he's putting the bag of food on the desk. Still not looking at me.

And then I begin to realise why he isn't.

He doesn't know.

He doesn't know what this means. What my behaviour means, what going out to get food means, what coming back means. To him this is what we've always done. He must feel it, this unspoken recognition of last night. But he doesn't know what it means.

So I step up to him, his eyes finally meeting mine and there's a searching for answers there, a soft confusion that I immediately want to get rid of, and so I gently grab the lapels of his coat and pull him closer, his expression changing into warming anticipation and it makes me smile just as my mouth finds his. He wraps his arms around me, pulling me tightly to him, and when he deepens the kiss I grow weak all over and I don't know if he knows what he's doing to me. It's fucking unbelievable what he's doing to me.

My hands are beneath his coat, sliding over the silk of his shirt, gripping thin folds, beginning to pull on the fabric, then moving to his chest, to the top button, mouth still locked with his, breathing laboured and body singing with this aching lust for his skin against mine and then there's the sound of the doorbell and we break the kiss, both still in a stupor, drunk on the moment, looking at the door as though whoever is waiting outside will appear without being let in or even acknowledged, my hands still grasping a half-undone button, his on my back, neither willing to let go, both realising at the same time that it's necessary and stepping apart. We share a look, one that makes me want to yell out of the window for whoever is there to go the hell away.

Another ring.

"Client?" I ask, rather despondently.

"Two-point-three-five second ring, produced by a steady finger," he says, sighing softly before finishing: "My mother."

And his father. And Rosie. All of them bustling into the sitting room a few minutes later, Sherlock having let them in. His back is rigid, he doesn't offer them anything to drink, but then they don't seem to expect it.

"Oh, she was an angel," Mrs Holmes assures me. "Such a delightful child. And clever. I can tell - didn't I say that I can tell that she's very clever? So alert. She slept through the night. What baby sleeps through the night?"

"Clearly this one," Sherlock mutters from the kitchen and I send him a look.

Mrs Holmes doesn't even pause.

"She had a very good dinner. Fishcakes. She wolfed them down. Such a good eater, nothing like Sherlock at that age. We thought he wouldn't grow - didn't we, dear?"

"Yes, we did think that, yes," Mr Holmes agrees, solemnly.

"Absolutely certain he'd suffer from stunted growth because he wouldn't eat a thing," Mrs Holmes underlines, turning to Sherlock for confirmation with a: "Would you, dear?"

"I'm sure I ate a thing or two, or I'd be quite dead," Sherlock bites off and I full out glare at him now, making him look away from me in stubborn annoyance.

"I nagged him and nagged him, but what good did that do? Absolutely no good at all. I can't tell you all the meals I cooked to try and coax him, find out if there was anything at all that he liked. It was hell, I tell you. A mother worries, you know. You always made me worry for you, Sherlock."

"Yes, and you always made me—"

"Thank you," I interrupt his input, smiling at his parents. "For taking care of Rosie for us— me. Very much appreciate it."

"Were you on a case?" Mr Holmes asks.

"Lovely to have you," Sherlock replies, finally moving into the sitting room only to coax them toward the door. "I'd tell you to come again soon, but, you know," he adds without any further explanation and I look to the ceiling in defeat.

"I really enjoy your blog, John - did I ever say?" Mr Holmes declares to me over Sherlock's shoulder, stepping backward onto the landing. "Jolly good read," he adds and I smile my thanks.

"Yes, yes, brilliant, fantastic, I'm sure you have plans for the day, so do go and, you know," Sherlock encourages, waiting on the landing as they get themselves down the stairs with a stream of further instructions on how best to take care of Rosie and to check the banister because it's not altogether as sturdy as it was before the renovation and then the front door opens and closes and there's stillness.

A few more seconds of waiting and then he reappears, stopping in the doorway, eyes in mine. I feel like I'm seeing him for the first time, and still there's nothing new to this, apart from Rosie on the floor, happily sitting surrounded by her toys. His eyes leave mine to drift to her, then back to me. My heart is tapping away, faster and faster, and I feel as though he's already touching me, my hands disturbing his tousled locks, his breath hot across my mouth. But then I see sense, and turn from him to pick Rosie up, giving her a kiss on the cheek, happy to see her.

He takes his coat off and I realise I'm still wearing my jacket, removing it as he begins to unpack the food, eyes meeting mine again and we share a slight smile at this sudden domesticity. We skip the cutlery and eat the cooling brunch with our fingers, on the floor, playing with Rosie. Well, I play with her while Sherlock mostly instructs her in how to play. It makes me laugh. And more than that, it makes me think that this will work. That this is how it's always worked, us, together. Always overly complicated and yet simple and straightforward where it matters.

We move around each other all day, with wholly intentional nearness, but without touching each other, without anything but the hint of a smile to remind us of last night and that the thought of it still lingers, still hangs in the air between us. I put Rosie down an hour early, knowing I'll most probably have to regret it in the morning, but unable to resist the urge any longer. I leave the door of my bedroom open and walk down the stairs.

He's not in the sitting room or the kitchen and I head down the short corridor, to the open door of his bedroom, where he's standing by the foot of the bed, his eyes meeting mine and I don't stop moving until I'm right in front of him, reaching out my hands for the button of his trousers, undoing it with rushed movements as my mouth finds his neck, producing soft noises from him that makes my longing for him border on madness and I kiss my way to his lips as his hands start to undress me and it's delirium, this state he puts me in, and I lose myself in him to find myself. I think I tell him. I think I tell him I love him.

And later, as we're falling asleep, I think I hear him murmur how he feels the same…

x

The chopper touches down on the helicopter pad at Sherrinford, the prison structure like a secluded modern day fortress taking up one corner of the small island. I step out, bag in hand, holding the final attempt at getting through to my sister, knowing this is the last resort and that if this fails I fear all hope is lost. I want to reach her. I have to. I need to save her, to make her see that she's not alone. That someone is here for her and always will be, no matter what she does, no matter what she's capable of putting them through. I love her. I need her to know it. And I think I've finally figured out a way of showing her, rather than telling her words that are meaningless to her.

I walk through the, by now, familiar halls and down the final stretch of corridor. I've been visiting regularly, though not as often as I would have liked, each time going through a rigorous security check, even with my high-grade visitors status, and I'm rather pleased at the improvements Mycroft has made since our joint break in. The elevator ride takes me down and slides open to reveal the front glass wall of my sister's abode.

Eurus. The East wind of my childhood that could never be tamed or captured or even understood - it was always simply a constant threat from my brother. From our brother. He's trying hard to right all those wrongs. He'll have to try hard for a very long time. Perhaps our sister would have been a different person if he hadn't insisted on keeping her in obscurity. Perhaps she could have been doing good, instead of all the ill she's inflicted. Mycroft has to live with that. I have to live with the failure of letting all memory of her go, when I should have fought to remember her. Here is the first step towards making her understand that I remember her now, that I see her.

I bring my violin out of the bag I've placed on the floor, lifting the bow with it, straightening up, eyes on her where she's sitting with her back to me. I draw a soft breath and begin to play. It doesn't take long for her to react to the melody. Her melody. In fact, she stands up with an incensed expression on her face, questioning whether I'm actually going to challenge her this way. I continue playing, telling her that I am, feeling a cautious satisfaction when she goes for her own violin and faces me on the other side of the glass, instrument at the ready, playing her own notes back at me, correcting me.

But this isn't my challenge. I allow her to take the lead and soon I can see the change in her as she begins to understand that I'm not trying to play at her, but with her. I want her to see that I know precisely where that melody was born. That we were always so alike, her and I, and that she can find redemption. There's redemption to be had in learning who you really are. In opening up to it and accepting yourself. But without the love of others it is sometimes impossible to love yourself, without someone leading the way through such a new and daunting wilderness it's sometimes impossible to amount the courage to even try. So I will lead her, because you taught me how.

You've taught me compassion and trust and the strength and perseverance of friendship, through hardships that should have sunk us you've kept us moving. I doubt I'd even be here, in this room, watching my sister's face begin to soften, and join me as my own added melody blends in and then takes over from hers, if I'd never met you.

I wouldn't have been on that roof with Moriarty either, but that's only because our game would have ended at the swimming pool. Whoever he would've brought there for leverage with a bomb strapped to them would have been collateral damage to the man I was before you started frowning at my social inaptitude. Before you I'd always shrugged peoples' reactions off as stupidity, but with you I couldn't. The man I was would have killed Moriarty rather than let him go, and died with him. Because all that mattered was winning, at all costs, even at the cost of my own life.

But with you there…

Here's the truth behind our story, here's the simple narrative thread that stitches every choice together with every circumstance: we may have been through hell to get to here, we may have been shot at and blown up and knocked out and beaten down, we may have had moments when we both wanted to put a swift end to our suffering and leave our bodies for Mrs Hudson to find in the morning, but all of it has made me into a man able to see beyond his own borders, it has made me into the brother who can find a way to bring his sister back from an abyss of her own making.

Had I lived in a world without you in it, and survived the swimming pool, and the possibility of a roof's edge, and gone on a man hunt, I would have been gone for longer. I would have been gone for much longer. Had I then been called back to London and resumed my work only to finally be confronted by my sister, I can only think of two plausible outcomes: her death or mine.

I owe you so much more than you've ever owed me.

I close my eyes as the music sweeps me up in thoughts of you, of nights of you, of yesterday morning, when I caught you looking at me, Rosie in your arms and you smiled, your eyes suddenly glittering mischievously, keeping them in mine as you said to your daughter:

"Please, don't take after him."

I offered you a lopsided smile in return, beginning to see how we are a family now. And people who come over to the flat seem to see it, too. They take the tour, glad the place is back to normal, and then begin to notice how we move around each other in a different way. I notice them noticing. I can tell they wonder, but no one's yet attempted to ask anything or to make any observation out loud. The ever trustable Mrs Hudson drew breath a few days ago, but you started talking about the weather and got her onto the subject of her bad hip, exchanging a glance and a brief smile with me, knowing I was already beginning to mute out the conversation. Because you know me.

And what people think is of little consequence. They'll know when they know because it is what it is, this chance taken before it was gone forever. And now that I have you, I'm not losing you. Whatever we have been, and whatever we have yet to become, I know now, without any doubt, that my future lies with you. When for so long I didn't even dare think it.

I was so alone.

And then you happened to me.


	2. Author's Note

Sorry peeps - I'll get back to you with a less frustrated rant asap. Been thinking about this one and feel that, though I do still mean every word of it, I'd rather write something different - less rooted in personal emotions and opinions.

Thanks for reading!

Annie


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